Schoolgirls are being investigated by police following the suicide of a 12-year-old girl who suffered relentless cyber-bullying, authorities said today.

Rebecca Ann Sedwick leaped to her death from a cement silo at an abandoned factory a mile from her home in Lakeland, Florida.

Her body was discovered at 6.45am on Tuesday morning after her mother reported that her daughter had not returned from school on Monday evening.

Polk County sheriff Grady Judd said on Thursday that law enforcement and the school district were not to blame, adding that he planned to press charges against the bullies if enough evidence is found.

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Devastated: Rebecca Ann Sedwick, 12, (pictured with her mother Tricia Norman) is believed to have leaped to her death from an abandoned cement silo in Florida after being relentlessly bullied by girls online

Judd told the Orlando Sentinel: 'Girls can get pretty catty as kids. The system cannot manage all that cattiness … I truly
believe the school system tried but we don't live in a perfect world.'

Detectives are now looking at 15 girls
who may have been involved and the sheriff said today that if there is
enough evidence to prove that the law has been broken, he will recommend that
they be charged.

A vigil was held for 12-year-old Rebecca at the abandoned factory where she took her own life on Wednesday night.

Following her suicide, Rebecca's family found online bullying directed at her just four days before, according to 10 News.

The family believed that the bullying had stopped after the 12-year-old was moved school.

Rebecca's mother Tricia Norman told theLakeland Ledger that
girls had bullied her daughter viciously online at Crystal Lake
Elementary School last year, bombarding her with messages on her cellphone such as: 'You're ugly'; 'Why are you still alive?' and 'Go kill
yourself'.

At one point the 12-year-old was physically attacked in school. Ms Norman pulled her daughter out of Crystal Lake and moved her to Lawton Childs Middle
Academy.

Remorseless: This is believed to be the Ask.Fm page of Rebecca Ann Sedwick - showing some examples of the abuse she suffered

Despite being moved school and shutting down her Facebook account, the remorseless bullying carried on online through other sites and services.

The girl's devastated mother said that a group of
five or six girls at Crystal Lake who bullied her on Facebook continued
to torment the 12-year-old even after she had left.

The mother was so incensed by the bullying at Crystal Lake that she filed two complaints to the school.

'She has been bullied before and people had told her she needed to kill herself,' Sedwick’s sister, Summer Howard, said to The Ledger. 'But we all thought she was fine now. No one had known.'

Tragically, Ms Norman said that she was
never informed that her daughter did not show up for class on Monday
morning because of a problem with Lawton Chiles Middle Academy's
automated system.

Lonely death: Rebecca Ann Sedwick's body was discovered at the base of this cement silo just a mile from her home

Deputies discovered her body at around 2.25am on Tuesday on the ground at a former Cemex cement site.

Summer Howard said she told deputies that her sister had snuck into the site, around half a mile from their home, before and used to climb on the cement silos.

Police forensic officers were seen on Tuesday afternoon at the top of one of the cement silos dusting for fingerprints.

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'I don’t know what I’m doing,' Norman said to The Ledger. 'I don’t know what I’m supposed to do next. I just lost my world.

'My life is just never going to be the same, I’m missing a big part of it, a huge part of it.'

The Polk Country Sheriff's Office
revealed that Sedwick had been caught cutting herself and making
comments about wanting to hurt herself before Monday, but Norman said
she didn't know the cyber-bullying had resumed.

Bullied: Rebecca was withdrawn from her elementary school for home-schooling in the aftermath of he cyberbullying being uncovered and her mother Tricia (right) said that she believes it to be a warning to all parents to be vigilant

Norman said that the bullying at Crystal Lake became so bad earlier this year that her daughter was hospitalized with self-inflicted cuts on her arms and legs.

'When she was being bullied at Crystal Lake Middle, she used to come home every day and tell me how she wasn’t worth anything, that she was ugly, how she was stupid,' Norman said.

'And I said, ''Baby what on earth would make you think that? You’re the most beautiful person I know and the smartest person I know.'''

However, once police checked her cell phone they discovered that the bullying had not stopped, especially on Kik Messenger, Instagram and Ask.fm.